No description available.

No description available.

Normal Language requires the integration of formal, conceptual, and pragmatic knowledge. It appears to involve the analytic processing of the left hemisphere and the holistic processing of the right. To study hemisphere involvement in language processing, patients with unilateral right or left hemisphere lesions and a matched neurologically normal control group were tested on their ability to perceive stress and intonation contrasts in words and phrases of varying length. The results suggest that both hemispheres are involved in normal language processing, each in a qualitatively different way. Whereas the left hemisphere appears to work from the bottom up, analyzing information sequentially and arriving at the overall pattern, the right hemisphere works from the top down, beginning with the overall pattern and working to fill in the details. Moreover, the importance of each hemisphere's participation may change in response to different grammatical and contexual variables.

Semantic knowledge was investigated in patients diagnosed with Dementia of the Alzheimer's Type (DAT) by means of an off-line probe question battery and an on-line measurement of semantic priming in a lexical decision task (LDT) that varied the stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA). The patients' performance on the detailed probe questions showed that their semantic deficit was confined primarily to animate concepts, characterized by visual descriptive features. In the primed LDT, demented patients demonstrated increased semantic priming compared to age-matched controls. A trend was also found indicating that for both normal controls and DAT subjects the priming magnitude decreased as the SOA increased. These results are interpreted in terms of a distributed representation of semantic knowledge that is impaired in demented patients.

No description available.

This study investigated the phonological awareness abilities of children who were typical and atypical. The primary purpose of this study was to determine whether there were developmental differences in the phonological awareness abilities (i.e., syllable, onset/rime, phonemes) of the two groups of participants through a sound segmentation task. The participants were arranged into preschool, kindergarten, and first grade groups. Stimuli included one and two syllable words, which were originally used by Treiman and Zukowski (1991) when they investigated the sound segmentation abilities of typical children. As part of the sound segmentation task, participants were asked to listen to a pair of words and indicate if the one and two syllable words had any sounds in common, either at the phoneme, onset/rime, or syllable levels.An analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was performed and results revealed a significant difference between children who were typical and children that were specific language impaired (SLI) on segmenting. The children who were typical were more effective at segmenting than children who were SLI. Results also revealed that there was a significant different between the first grade children and the preschool children in both groups to segment words at all three conditions. Significant differences were also noted between the types of phonological task completed among participants. The phoneme task was significantly different than the onset/rime and syllable tasks. Also, the onset/rime task was significantly different that the phoneme and syllable task.The combined data from this study revealed developmental trends in phonological awareness for the typical population. However, the developmental trend was not observed in the SLI population. It was noted that the typical population was more efficient in segmentation of words than the SLI population.The data that were obtained provides additional information on the phonological awareness development in typical children and children with SLI. The data may also assist researchers and clinicians in the identification and treatment of children with language impairments. The results may also provide researchers and practitioners important insight into literacy development, given the strong correlation between sound segmentation and the ability to read and write. / Department of Special Education

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2007. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on November 26, 2007) Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Toronto, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 36-56).

Thesis (M.S.)--Bowling Green State University, 2009. / Document formatted into pages; contains viii, 55 p. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Nevada, Reno, 2008. / "May, 2008." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 56-61). Library also has microfilm. Ann Arbor, Mich. : ProQuest Information and Learning Company, [2009]. 1 microfilm reel ; 35 mm. Online version available on the World Wide Web.